Difference between revisions of "Team:NUS Singapore-A"

Acknowledgements

All members of NUSGEM 2018 would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to the following people who have helped us in making our project both possible and successful.

The 2018 team was formed in February. We are a multidisciplinary team with diverse academic backgrounds. The team is made up members from life sciences, engineering (biomedical, chemical and material, engineering science program), architecture, and medicine. NUSGEM 2018 was supported generously by NUS Faculty of Engineering. The BioMakerSpace at the faculty’s block E6 was built last year specially for present and future NUS iGEM teams to carry out experiments for this competition in many years to come, as an effort to promote Synthetic Biology in NUS. The office space was also made available to us for team meetings and bonding. We are very fortunate to also be generously supported by Synthetic Biology for Clinical & Technological Innovation (SynCTI), with tremendous amounts of manpower, resources and materials provided by the labs of Associate Professor Poh Chueh Loo, Associate Professor Matthew Chang and Associate Professor Yew Wen Shan.

Associate Professor Poh Chueh Loo and Assistant Professor Jimmy Peng oversaw the entire project, from its start to its finish, and provided constant direction and motivation to the team.

The team brainstormed from February to late May before finally settling on a project topic. During the long and gruelling brainstorming period, the team received a lot of constructive feedback from Professor Richard Kitney and Professor Paul Freemont from Imperial College London. The problem statement was able to be solidified and reinforced by the kind and big-hearted people who agreed to be interviewed (see Human Practices for more details). Their openness to sharing their experience and opinions allowed the team to understand the industrial relevance and technical difficulties of the project. On a more scientific front, Professor Yew Wen Shan and Dr. Foo Lee Joon from National University of Singapore provided invaluable insights on the design of the genetic circuit.

Lab work begun only in late June. The team received incredible support from Mr. Zhang Jingyun, Dr. Saravanan Prabhu Nadarajan and Dr. Lim Yan Ping. All three acted as advisors who worked tirelessly and closely with the team to guide and support the team in their experiments. Mr. David Chee provided invaluable guidance on parts registration and submission. We would also like to acknowledge Dr. Ling Hua for providing us with E. coli strains: BL21 Star and BW25141, and Dr. Teh Ai Ying for guiding us through the SDS-PAGE process. We also want to extend our gratitude to Dr. Yeoh Jing Wui helped provide the modelling team with her expert advice throughout the entire length of the project, and Dr. Maurice Ling from AdvanceSyn for his equally valuable assistance in modelling.

Our hardware fabrication would not be possible if not for the generous facilities and materials support from the E2A Electronics Workshop, DCP Fabrication Laboratory and BME Design Studio for their generous support in facilities, materials and manpower. We would like to thank Miss Annie, Mr Justin, Mr Brian and Mr Muhammed Abdurrahiem bin Abdul for their support in materials and advice (?) in building our hardware.

We would like to thank our collaborators, team CUHK 2018 (hyperlink), team NTU 2018 (hyperlink) team Toulouse 2018 (hyperlink) and team Aalto-Helsinki 2018 (hyperlink). Team CUHK and team NTU helped us in our experimental designs and experiments - Team CUHK helped us to design our aptamer constructs, while team NTU helped us to conduct real-time PCR on our enzymes. Team Toulouse and team Aalto-Helsinki helped us to gain a more comprehensive coverage in our human practices work, such that we can collectively produce written works reflecting the views and situations on bioethics and textiles pollution in different regions in the world.

Our outreach events would not have been possible if not for the support of NUS Biomedical Engineering Club, NUS Tembusu College, NUS Ridge View Residential College, the researchers who have spoken in our events, as well as the staff of the pre-university institutions in Singapore. We would like to thank Assistant Professor Raye Yeow, the advisor to the NUS Biomedical Engineering Club, as well as the chair of the Biomedical Engineering Society Student Chapter, for his support and approval of this event, and for kindly helping us to disseminate the details of our event, Life Hacks! 2018 to the BES SC-affiliated student groups. Staff, such as teachers, in the pre-university institutions have very kindly helped us to promote this event to their students. Because of their help in publicity, we received overwhelming response for our event. We would also like to thank NUS Tembusu College and NUS Ridge View Residential College for providing us a platform to introduce our project to their students. Last but not least, we are grateful to the researchers Dr. Sonja Luz, Dr. Owen Schaefer, and Associate Professor Lisa Ng, who have taken time out of their busy schedules to grace our events as guest speakers to introduce topics in their expertise that we would otherwise not be able to cover.

We would also like to elaborate on how our school has made synthetic biology more accessible for students to learn about and explore Synthetic Biology. At the National University of Singapore (NUS), 2 synthetic biology modules are offered: one in Faculty of Engineering and the other in the Faculty of Science.

In Faculty of Engineering, the module BN4501 Engineering Biology is a new module set up just 2 years ago that aims to introduce year 3 and 4 Biomedical Engineering students to the exciting field of Synthetic Biology. In this module, students are taught how engineering and biology integrate with one another. Students get to learn how to apply electrical engineering concepts to biological systems, such as boolean algebra, so that they can construct sound gene circuits following the electrical engineering principles. Students also get to learn to model biological systems, specifically in E. coli cells, using Matlab. The module also actively introduces students to the iGEM competition - using the biobricks as teaching materials to help them visualise how can the various parts come together to form working gene circuits to perform interesting functions.

In Faculty of Science, the module LSM3246 Synthetic Biology is offered to third year Life Science students. Its aim is to provide basic principles to an exciting and relatively new concept - engineering biology. In this module, students get to learn how to construct synthetic gene circuits in living organisms using the latest genome engineering tools and techniques. Perhaps on a more exciting front, industrial players in the field are invited to share real-life examples of how synthetic biology can be applied to a myriad of industrial applications including disease prevention, biochemicals production and drug development. The module also discusses the socio-ethical responsibilities that are required of synthetic biologists. This course is made available to students in both semesters 1 and 2. Professor Poh Chueh Loo introduces iGEM in this module and students may volunteer to sign up to be part of the team.

Last but not least, we would like to thank all other people, including our friends and family, who have supported us through the journey and made it a meaningful and fulfilling one.